


Salt in the Rainbow

by CrabOfDoom



Series: Breath After Breath [3]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Amputation, Manipulation, Other, Stabbing, emotional stress, psychological abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 10:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11507832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrabOfDoom/pseuds/CrabOfDoom
Summary: Lies fall apart when their victims can compare notes.[Continuation of Breath After Breath]





	Salt in the Rainbow

**Author's Note:**

> Picking through the pieces, and what do you have at all  
> Just the danger of relying on those who would let you fall  
> So you try, try much harder, until the truth is drawn  
> The very thing you've been searching for has been yours, all along

The days when Ravus' heart felt light and joyous weren't necessarily rare, but the spans of days and weeks in between them could feel like an eternity. One such span was due to shrivel and expire in a glorious burst of metaphorical sunlight, like a loathsome and tangled wild vine, within the hour. An airship would be returning from a scouting mission for intel on the state of Lucis' defenses. Insomnia's defenses, in particular. A general would be on that ship; one that inspired Ravus to stand before a mirror in his quarters, to make certain with the tips of his ring fingers that his eyebrows were in order, to run his hands back through his shoulder-length ash blond hair.

It was all silly, he supposed. The general was likely to be his usual mess of soot and gore, and certainly wasn't going to hold a hair out of place against the deputy high commander. Then again, looking his best was something the general did for Ravus, whenever it was he being welcomed back, and oh, the double takes the general could elicit from the other officers when he so desired. If Safay Roth never failed to devastate the Niflheim elite for the sole benefit of Ravus Nox Fleuret, then Ravus wasn't about to fail him, either.

A boy barely over seventeen still lived on in Ravus' soul on these days, and that boy wanted to run to the docking bay where the ship was due. Ten years now, since he'd first taken his lover, and still that young, misplaced prince raced off as though to prevent being late for a first date? Ravus managed to maintain his adult dignity and keep his pace calm but determined as he left his quarters and began navigating a maze of windowless corridors. It took considerable effort, when his heart was practically giving him wings.

Ravus huffed a quiet breath of laughter at his own sentimentality. His face fell quickly, as he rounded a corner, only to meet with a figure in a large, dark coat that blocked his path.

"Chancellor," Ravus curtly greeted. "Apologies. I hadn't seen you there. If you'll excuse me, I have an appointment to keep."

"No," Ardyn spoke after him, "you don't."

Ravus turned back to face him and felt a chill settle into his spine.

"The scouts to Lucis. The transport. It's due back any time."

"It's docked already," Ardyn relayed. "Close to half an hour ago."

"Half an-- Why wasn't I told?!"

"That's what I was on my way to do, personally." Ardyn closed the distance between them slowly, and lowered his voice. "There's no kind way to tell you, my lad. General Safay was not on that transport."

Ravus' pulse sped up in a most nauseating combination of dread and panic. "H-he's still in Lucis?"

"In spirit, perhaps," Ardyn said. "He's dead, commander."

"What do you... where... you can't mean he's... he's..."

"Dead," Ardyn repeated, his brows drawn up in apology. "A band of citizen militants, apparently. Lucians, loyalists to Regis, working under the belief that Insomnia's only defense is the annihilation of Niflheim. They fought dirty. One got behind Safay; ran him through, on his right side. The rest smelled the blood in the water, as it were, and knew they had to swarm him before he could reach a potion. And they did. He was scalped, to take his braid for a trophy. They burned the rest."

Ravus didn't know when he'd fallen to his knees, but it was where he found himself, bent double and directing all of his focus into not retching in the middle of the corridor, while he was left defenseless against a stinging surge of tears.

"A wretched fate for such loyal soldier," Ardyn said. His voice dripped with sympathy, in a tone entirely at odds with the unseen smirk on his lips.

"Tell me they're dead," Ravus croaked. "TELL ME THOSE BASTARDS ARE DEAD."

"Compose yourself, commander," Ardyn said, as he held a hand to the top of Ravus' head. "This isn't the prince you'd want Safay to remember, now, is it? But, that band, yes. They were cocky over catching a real warrior off guard, and poorly prepared for the axmen MTs who found them. There are still other branches, however. Regis quietly fosters them as squadrons of a militia; forces easier to hide in a crowd than his Crownsguard and Kingsglaive."

"Fucking Regis," Ravus groaned, his forehead nearly to the floor. "That son of a bitch brings death to _everything_ I love..."

"Forgive my saying so," Ardyn added, "but not _everything._ Not yet."

Ravus looked up at the chancellor with a horrified light in his reddened eyes.

Lunafreya. She was still set to be betrothed to Regis' son; to walk headlong into this unfathomable curse that was swallowing up everything Ravus had ever held dear.

"Kill them all," Ravus breathed out, his voice low with a chilling calm. "Bomb that gods-forsaken Citadel until nothing is left but a smoldering crater."

"Put it in writing."

"Put what?" Ravus asked. His head throbbed terribly from tension and grief.

"Make it a formal proposal," Ardyn rephrased. "Iedolas has been in talks with Glauca and Caligo about seizing the Crystal and the Ring of the Lucii for months. Be the bravest man in the room, that puts their talking into action. Make the proposal that the time to strike Lucis is now. They're no doubt feeling proud of themselves for taking down one of Niflheim's strongest weapons, wouldn't you say? And pride comes before the fall."

Slowly, Ravus looked away and nodded. "At once."

"No," Ardyn countered, in a sympathetic voice. "Take the night for yourself, commander. Take a day's leave tomorrow, as well. Allow yourself to mourn the loss of such a... close friend. Start a draft. Polish it by the next day's dawn. I'll accompany you, myself, to deliver it to Iedolas, on that morning."

"Appreciated, chancellor," Ravus noted, tiredly. He stood, and at a dazed pace, began to walk away in the direction he'd come from.

"Ravus," Ardyn called after him. The commander's retreat paused, and only his head turned. "Insomnia must pay. And she will. Be assured of that. Regis and his son will die, and Lunafreya will be spared from this madness."

"While the starscourge plunges the world into darkness, unabated," Ravus concluded. It was a highly inconvenient thought, but one that did affect the existence of all life on Eos.

"How can you be certain?" Ardyn asked. "The ring has made no choice, but Regis, and he grows old and frail. There is no guarantee that Noctis would be the chosen king. The boy's practically as frail as his father. And if your dear mother were still alive, wouldn't _she_ be Oracle, and not Lunafreya?"

"Yes..." Ravus pondered quietly. Pieces fell into place for him quickly.

"Would the Astrals place the world's fate on a weakling prince, made of glass?" Ardyn continued. "If Noctis falls, another will take his place. Another will have to. Just as it will be Lunafreya to make the covenants with the Six, only because Sylva cannot. Iedolas is confident that he will be chosen, and rule a new era of Solheim. But we're realists, you and I: Iedolas' age may not be on his side, and his sole ambition is control. I'm sure the Astrals would show more favor to someone driven by a righteous thirst for justice, and a desire to selflessly protect others? What could be more worthy of the ring's power?"

"What, indeed," Ravus agreed, and continued on his way.

\---------------

Footsteps, thick on the transport's metal paneled floor, drew Safay out of the yoga stretching routine that had been keeping him from pacing the cargo bay in boredom. The general was on his feet and at his full height within a second to face the new arrival with at least some manner of decorum.

A hand protruding from the thick sleeve of an oversized coat motioned with a wave for privacy, and a force of two dozen magitek troops powered down into their stand-by mode.

"Chancellor," Safay greeted.

"General," Ardyn returned. "Have you been briefed on your mission?"

"No," Safay answered. "I'd like to think that after sixteen years in the army, I've made it clear that I don't repeat secrets, so why has this mission's objective been kept as one?"

Ardyn's head took on a slight tilt of contemplation. "It's rather remarkable, in its way: there was a time when you wouldn't dare be so demanding, to anyone."

"Wouldn't dare, or didn't care," Safay shrugged. "The same results, either way."

"You've long been obstinate," Ardyn said, "but the self-assurance has been something new, over the past few years. Pride, rubbing off from a certain royal-born commander?"

The very thought of him brought an upward tug at the corner of Safay's mouth. Deeply subtle, but noticed.

"That's entirely possible," Safay granted.

"Hmm. And unfortunate."

"... Why?"

"Your mission is set to be a long one," Ardyn said. "It's unfortunate that you've grown so fond of the deputy high commander, as you will likely not be seeing him again."

Safay's lips parted, his jaw and throat worked to ask questions and demand answers, but no sound at all made its way out of him.

Ardyn spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

"Iedolas," the chancellor said, as if the name would explain everything, and it did, in fact, relate a great deal. "His dreams of restoring Solheim don't care about the little lives that must suffer along the way. The First Secretary of Accordo has a daughter, due to turn twenty. Unmarried. Iedolas is already planning to marry Lady Lunafreya to the prince of Lucis, and has decided that, in a more quiet bid of political cooperation, her also unmarried brother should wed Camelia's daughter and bind Accordo as not just a Niflheim territory, but as an ally."

"Well, she can't have him!" Safay blurted in a cracking, uneven, and loud outburst, as his voice finally found itself again.

"That is not for you to decide, general," Ardyn lowly pointed out. "Lord Ravus has already consented, for the good of Niflheim and Tenebrae."

"H-he would have told me..."

"Told you, what?" Ardyn asked. "That your little affair was over? Have sense, Safay. You've never experienced a break-up before. Any man in his right mind would delegate the task of having to tell you, to someone else. You could well resort to screaming, bawling, violence; how is he to know? How are _you_ to know?"

"I'm not some wild beast," Safay defended angrily. "I'd never do anything to harm him! He has to know that! It's been ten fucking years! He has to know that!"

"Tsk," Ardyn chided, with a shake of his head. "Listen to yourself, Safay. One loud, raw nerve, just as he feared."

"No. No, he's never been afraid of me..."

"He's never had reason to be, before," Ardyn said. "But this? Being dumped for a social upgrade? It brings out the worst in anyone. Even murder, of the very people they swore they'd never harm."

"I couldn't," Safay swore, weakly, "not ever..."

Ardyn shrugged a shoulder. "Apparently, Lord Ravus does not share the faith you have in yourself, or he'd not have asked me to do the dubious honor of telling you, on his behalf."

"Why is this happening?" Safay pulled his hands down his face, and dragged faint, damp streaks along his skin, with them.

"Do you honestly not know?" Ardyn asked. "I've defended your intelligence to Iedolas--more than once--and you tell me that you don't know? The miserable wretch, covered in filth and blood hasn't comprehended that a bath doesn't change the stray animal, brought inside from an alley trashcan? Come now, Safay. Ravus came out of a queen. And you, out of a load of sterile gel in an acrylic box. Do you truly think a royal was ever going see you as worthy of being his bride? He'd never have given you a second glance, had I not interceded. You were the closest port in his storm, and now, the clouds have parted and shown him a way back to the sort of life he's accustomed to. A life that no longer includes sleeping with laboratory trash that never says 'no'."

Before the chancellor, Safay shook with pain and rage and humiliation. There was nothing Ardyn had said that he could deny, nor prove wrong. The soldier folded his arms tightly, and turned away. A flash of light, pale and bright red, went unseen behind him, as Safay closed his eyes for a long breath.

The sound of Ardyn's footsteps drew closer, at a slow pace.

"Do you know what pains me most about this whole sordid situation?" Ardyn asked. He received no reply. "He didn't just use you, Safay..."

The soldier opened his eyes to half, in an empty gaze of heavy-lidded sorrow. They flew open wide an instant after, in response to a sharp and searing pain. Safay looked down and found the blade of the chancellor's sword sticking out of his body, just above his right hip, and dripping with his own blood.

"He took an unparalleled killer and filled your head with so much nonsense, that you started thinking that you could actually be human. And now, look at you. Too feral and vicious to ever be one of them; too softened and weak to be of anymore use to your whole reason for existing. He _ruined_ you, and left me with no alternative, but to put down a lame animal."

Swiftly, Ardyn sliced his sword free through the flesh of Safay's side. The soldier slowly fell to his knees, and doubled over from the pain. Ardyn dug his fingers into the ropes of silver hair that braided over his scalp, and yanked the soldier upright. Safay refrained from crying out.

Ardyn clucked his tongue, in pity.

"I've done everything but behead you, and still, no protest, not the first lash or bite against a hand that owns you." The backs of his fingers brushed down Safay's porcelain cheek. "It's going to be terribly hard to forgive him, for costing me such an obedient pet. But, alas, a killer who'd trust anyone enough to turn his back to them, is a killer that wouldn't have lived much longer, anyway."

A loud and deep klunking noise shook the cargo hold, and the disembarkment ramp began to lower. The cold air of high altitude rushed into the hold like an instant maelstrom. With little effort, Ardyn yanked the heavy weight of the densely-muscled soldier to his faltering feet, by the hair still in the chancellor's grasp. Casually, Ardyn dragged the soldier to the hold's open edge.

"Even the most perfect rose," he began, somehow clear in Safay's fogging mind, despite the howls of the wind, "one day outlives its purpose, and ends up just another bit of garbage."

A heft of his arm, and Ardyn threw the bleeding soldier down the ramp and into the open sky above the wilderness at the bottom of Lestallum's cliffs.

\---------------

A shadow of a most peculiar shape blocked the waning moonlight from reaching the undisturbed snow along the sides of a paved road. The two narrow lanes snaked through a thick forest, roughly a hundred miles inside of Niflheim's southern border. The shadow grew as it neared the ground, and took aim for the slightest of clearings among the pines, a few dozen feet behind the forest's edge by the road's shoulder. A single, massive black wing shifted its position from horizontal to vertical, and slowed its owner's descent to a much less catastrophic speed.

The boots of one tall man, with another over his shoulder, cratered into the hard-packed snow. Safay kicked up a small blizzard of his own, from running with his flight's speed to keep himself from pitching forward. If inelegantly, he managed to slow to a walk and a stop, without slamming into a tree nor dumping his passenger. Safay set Ravus on his feet, and immediately moved himself a safe distance away.

Still off-balance without the anchored weight of his armored prosthetic, Ravus wavered and dropped to his knees. The Oracle savored a brief moment to thank Shiva for the softened landing, and to be on solid ground again, before returning his attention to his rescuer.

Before him, Safay summoned a sword to his right hand--unusual for the soldier--and swung it in a few vertical circles, at his side. As the blade picked up speed, Safay forced his wing to outstretch. The sword's next rotation sheared through the feathered growth. Ravus barely had time to make a sound of horror, as the appendage hit the shin-deep snow with all the noise of a blanket being tossed onto a bare floor.

Safay stifled a pained grunt through gritted teeth, but in his next breath, looked relieved. His right hand fell to his side, and the sword disappeared in a fog of the same bright light it had come from. Behind him, Ravus saw no blood on the snow; only thin wisps of black smoke, like a snuffed candle, rising from the feathers and the torn seam on Safay's coat, until the wing disintegrated and blew away on a building wind.

"What the hell was that?!" Ravus asked.

Safay looked behind himself, although all traces of his wing were gone.

"Magitek," Safay replied. He gestured with apology to the severed arm Ravus still held under his upper arm. "Only... without the tech."

"Safay...?"

"Yeah?"

Ravus clamored to his feet, grasped the front of Safay's clothes, and slammed the soldier's back against the closest tree. It was barely more than a weary push, in his weakened state. Emotions that weren't despair nor grief nor anger nevertheless drove Ravus to kiss Safay's mouth as hard as the phoenix down's energy would allow.

"How," Ravus demanded, in between the starts of new and more jubilant kisses, "are you... still alive?!"

"How did you know?" Safay asked. "Why would you _care_?"

Ravus stared at him, wide-eyed and aghast. "Why would I _not?!_ " He demanded. The high commander let his severed prosthetic fall to the snow and did as best he could with only one arm, to snare his rescuer in the tightest embrace he could manage. Tears fell free as he felt it wasn't tightly enough. It would never be tightly enough again.

"Safay, your loss was the death of all joy, for me," he said. "I carried on for Luna, but as nothing more than a hollow, angry, grief-stricken husk. I haven't known a single peaceful rest since I lost you. Since I _thought_ that I lost you. Where the hell have you been?! How are you still alive?!"

"You...missed me?"

"Yes!" Ravus shouted. "Gods above, yes! This is the first time I've felt my heart beating in months!"

"Did you marry her?"

At that question, Ravus pulled back just enough to see Safay's face. His perfectly earnest and terrified-of-hearing-the-answer-from-Ravus'-own-lips face.

"Marry whom?"

"H-he lied? About all of it?"

"Safay, _who?_ I'm not understanding this at al--" Ravus cut himself off as the obvious dawned on him.

What would've hurt him the most, without risking Iedolas' plans for Luna? Kill his lover. Blame it on a king Ravus already despised, to ensure that he'd want that king's crown city destroyed, in vengeance. If that lover were to somehow survive, how would one keep them away and keep the distraught high commander from realizing he'd been betrayed? Break their heart. Break their spirit. Convince them that their high commander wanted someone else, when the lover was certain to refuse to stand in the way of Ravus' happiness. And who would possibly know them both that well? Who would they believe?

"Ardyn?" Ravus concluded. The only person, aside of Luna, who knew how involved they were with one another. The very man who'd gone to great effort and expense to set them up, in the first place. "Was it he that told you?"

Safay leaned in to bury his face against Ravus' collarbone, ashamed. Ravus kissed the soldier's ear.

"My gem, if he told you that I no longer loved you, it was nothing but a vicious lie."

Pained sobbing broke out, against Ravus' shoulder.

"I believed him," Safay said, his voice still raw from the Keep. "I can't believe that I really am so stupid that I'd--"

" _Lies_ ," Ravus stated. "You are not stupid, Safay; at the very least, no more so than I. I believed him, as well, when I should have known that no ill-bred, untrained rebels could've possibly overpowered you."

It was Safay's turn to grow still and confused. "What?"

Ravus paused. Just how far back did Ardyn's lies go? "When we were separated: were you ever sent on a mission to scout for weaknesses in Insomnia's defenses?"

"No," Safay answered. "Well, there was supposed to be _a_ mission, and I was put on a transport with about a dozen MTs. I wasn't told what it was actually for."

"And what came of this mission?"

"I got dumped," Safay sighed. "Figuratively and literally."

"He just _left_ you somewhere?"

"Not exactly." Safay reluctantly pulled out Ravus' grip, to straighten. It was the first time Ravus noticed that Safay wasn't in his general's uniform at all, but a very civilian leather motorcycle jacket, and jeans so abraded and torn that it was wonder they hadn't been shredded off of his legs by the wind in mid-flight. Safay unzipped the jacket, slipped his right arm out of its sleeve, and lifted the right edge of a black muscle shirt.

"Gods above, Safay," Ravus whispered. He traced his fingers along a broad, obvious scar above Safay's hip. A stab and a slash, from the way the line of healed, damaged flesh went all the way around to the soldier's back. Exactly where Ravus had been told.

"He did this," Ravus surmised. "He blamed your death on Lucians, and he did this! I made the proposal to invade Insomnia, myself, in want to avenge you, AND HE DID THIS TO YOU?!"

"And to _you_?" Safay asked, as his gaze drifted down and over to the absence of Ravus' left arm.

Ravus' eyes followed, and immediately looked away.

"The first time," Ravus said, "I, alone, was at fault. But this time? Yes."

" _First_ time?" Safay repeated, in horror. "Ravus, what the fuck has happened, in all these months?!"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter--"

The wide-eyed incredulity before him begged to differ.

"Alright, it does," he surrendered, "but not now. Not here. Get your coat back on, my love. It's freezing."

"So, you're not going to tell me?" Safay asked, as he shrugged back into his jacket's sleeve.

"No, I shall," Ravus said. "I swear it, but it would take all night, most likely, and it would be far preferable to do so somewhere private and warm." He paused to look around them, for bearing. Outside of the treeline, the ruts in the snow on the two-lane road had been undisturbed from passing traffic long enough that a frozen mist of falling powder was steadily turning them invisible. "And... that begs the question of where, precisely, we're to go, from here?"

Safay pulled a phone from his inner chest pocket. It cast a soft green light on his face as his thumb worked through a few options.

"How are your legs?" Safay asked, apology in his eyes. "The tracker says I landed not quite a mile north of my truck."

"I'll bitch about it, but I'll survive," Ravus grumbled. He failed to keep the start a of a smile from his lips as he looked to the soldier. "But, you'll be with me?"

"Of course I will, fool," Safay smiled back. "From now, on. I can take your arm, if you want to hold on around my shoulders. Lean on me, if you have to, and remember that we can afford a little more time, if you have to take it slow."

"You're too good to me, General."

"Yeah, well, we'll see how you feel about that, when I get you into a bed and don't let you out for a week."

"Are you... chattering?"

"It's nothing," Safay dismissed, even as teeth refused to stop. "I just never intended to come back here. I only had the uniform I landed in, then kept to warmer climates since then. I never bothered to get any new winter clothes. These are the heaviest things I have."

"I see you wisely kept your boots, at least."

"Heh, wisely. Shoes big enough for my feet are hard to come by."

"... I know how much you hate Niflheim, Safay."

"Yeah, I might've mentioned that before, a time or twenty."

"But you came back. For me."

"I had to," Safay sighed. "I love you. I'm sure it doesn't make much sense--especially, now that I know it was all bullshit--but if you wanted to be a man of high stature again, that was one thing. That would've been _you_. But no way in hell, I'm gonna hear a radio tell me that you've been sentenced to death, and do nothing about it."

"How in the world did you park a truck somewhere along here, and cross a good hundred miles more, on foot?"

"I didn't... exactly. I called Aranea, to find out if the news was true. She said it was, and that you were on your way to the Keep to find that Noctis guy. You'd asked her help to evacuate around Fenestala, and she was just finishing with that before heading to Gralea, herself. I offered her half of all the gil I had if she'd just get me close to the Keep, so I could find you. Then I offered all of it. I didn't care; I have my connections, I could get more again, afterwards. She settled on two-thirds. I drove my truck into her airship's cargo hold, and she dropped it up ahead, so we'd have a getaway plan. Me, she dropped off before she landed outside Gralea. I got in pretty much the same way we got out."

"Yes. That was... unexpected."

"I forgot that you haven't seen that before."

"How new, or not new, is it, for you to have a wing that works?"

"Pre-you," Safay said. He didn't offer more.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You wouldn't even talk to me, until I looked more like a human being, Ravus. How was I supposed to bring up the subject? 'Oh, by the way, when people call me lab trash, there's a really good reason for that--surprise! I can mutate sometimes!'."

"Point taken," Ravus conceded. "But, truth, I'd never have seen a wing as a mutation, nor a flaw."

"You wouldn't."

"Certainly not. You've been an angel of mercy to me for years, Safay. Just tonight, you're the angel that called me back from death. It was most certainly surprising to see, yes, but is it any wonder that you'd have a wing? Is it any less divine, if it's feathers are black, and not white?"

He felt sure that Safay would blame the pink on his cheeks on the cold.

"And you say _I'm_ too good to _you_."

"I've been in love with your eyes, all this time, my gem. The eyes of a wild creature neither savage nor base, but wise and magical; with hair spun from moonlight, to match. What more is it to ask, to love another part of a whole that I adore?"

" _Ravus,_ " Safay cut off, sharply. "Listen to me carefully: it is way, WAY too cold to fuck you against a tree right now, yet your mouth is making it sound like a really good idea, anyway, so maybe save the seduction until our feet have thawed out somewhere, first."

"No promises," he chuckled. "But I shall try."

"Good. Very sensible of you."

"But you owe me--as you say--a 'fuck against a tree' on some warmer day."

"Gods, I love you, my prince."

"Yours, always, my soul and shield."

Ten minutes more, and Safay at last caught sight of the machine that signaled the end of their walking. Falling snow and evidence of a long-passed plow had formed a snow drift that half-buried the truck's tires, but the soldier didn't seem concerned. Safay unlocked the door, dislodged a small, square homing beacon, and pitched it as far as he could, into the forest. He put the truck's transmission in neutral, and with his back to the tailgate, pushed the truck slowly into the empty road. He opened the passenger's door, and gestured for Ravus to get inside, where his mending bones and muscles could finally rest.

A deep groan of gratitude from the prince didn't go unnoticed.

"Just hang on, Ravus," Safay said softly, as he closed the door, returned to slide in through his own, and set the armored prosthetic between them. "We need to keep driving until we're out of Niflheim. Then, I'll find you somewhere soft to sleep. I promise."

"We could sleep in this cab, under a lamp post, for all I care. You're inside, and the wind is not. That's heavenly enough."

Safay reached beside himself for a fond squeeze of Ravus' hand. His smile faded a good deal, to be met with nothing but the coldness of snow-chilled mythril plating and dormant magitek fingers, and the reminder that Ravus' left hand was no longer where it should have been. There wasn't time to dwell on it, though. The well-kept engine hidden beneath the dented, flaking-paint hood fired on the first turn of the key, and the mountains of Niflheim began to recede in the rearview mirror.

\---------------


End file.
